Back lighted displays arrange an imaging plane in front of a backlight that illuminates the image. The images can be fixed or changeable. Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and graphic printed transparent images often use backlights to illuminate the imaging plane. Exemplary backlights are uniformly bright, highly luminous, lightweight, inexpensively produced, and thin. Such qualities become more challenging with the growing use of light emitting diodes (LEDs) or other point light sources, the increasing size of displays, and the market drive for thinner and more slender designs. In addition to these features of backlights, optical film components are typically placed in front of the imaging planes to control the distribution of the image, image quality, and reduction in visual defects in the display or display content. Large screen TV's require large area film components that must be able to withstand manufacturing, shipping and use.
Optical film stacks in backlights and displays are typically supported in laminated sandwiches with thicker sheets of optical material. In such laminates, the optical film and additional sheets are directly attached or in close association with each other, to keep the individual films and sheets from shifting, wrinkling, or buckling. This approach can limit the use of thin films due to their flexibility and tendency to buckle or distort. Thicker sheet based methods of incorporating optical components in the displays can introduce significant parasitic optical losses in efficiency, as well as increasing weight and thickness. Absorption, scatter, and parasitic total internal reflection (TIR) light losses can be significant for thick sheet based display designs. Further, added interfaces when assembling film stacks using traditional methods introduces new defect opportunities in the display manufacturing process. Another method of incorporating optical films is to support the films with supporting wire or pins. Yet another method is to suspend films using discrete anchor points to hold the film in tension. Each of these methods suffers from significant limitations.